


ABC Magnets

by chanelbodybag



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Childhood Memories, Coming of Age, M/M, Mentioned NCT Ensemble, nahyuck nation.....this is for u
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23005501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanelbodybag/pseuds/chanelbodybag
Summary: “Since I have no sweet flower to send you, I enclose my heart; a little one, sunburnt, half broken sometimes…”— Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Mrs. Samuel Bowles, c. December 1858
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	ABC Magnets

When Donghyuck trips over his untied laces and skids skin against concrete, he looks up to meet the hand of the country’s biggest mafia boss. 

It feels like fate.

* * *

Donghyuck doesn’t know what his parents look like. He thinks his mother was tall, with black curls toppled around her shoulders. There’s the silhouette of a silk skirt that whips around when she leaves him at a fruit market stand and doesn’t return. He never sees her again. 

The foster system was a nightmare—either he was too much of a ruckus to handle or the caring provided teetered too close to the edge of negligence. He endures for three and a half years before he runs away. 

Street-sides turn him dirty. But he is a child nonetheless, innocuously tattered. There is still the telltale glow of his rosy skin beneath grime, cheeks puffy with baby fat, chapped lips sliced with cuts and dirt. He has on a cornflower blue polo with five stolen lollipops in his pocket. You can’t live off candy.  
  


* * *

A thief: he likes the sound of it. He revels in the sympathetic looks, the downcast stare of pity mixed with mild disgust. “Are you lost?” Donghyuck will always shake his head no. “Where is your mother?”

Then he will pout, scuffing up his sneakers shyly. They lean down and stroke his coiled hair, crouch at his level, offer apple slices or a tissue. When they aren’t looking Donghyuck takes their wallet, plucks an expensive watch off their wrist. Satisfaction burns in his chest and he takes himself to get milkshakes with extra whipped cream.

He gets in trouble sometimes. Donghyuck is charming but he is not careful. He tracks mud into a clothing store and ruins a pair of milky corduroy slacks. A mousy woman in a pencil skirt with pointy glasses shrieks at him, twists the tip of his ear and marches him right out the exit. He gorges himself on syrupy waffles and coffee with too much cream but goes quiet when the waiter brings him his tab. A beefy man yells in his face, threatening police and a broken arm, so Donghyuck stabs him in the thigh with a fork and runs. 

Time gets hazy too, but he remembers the little things. He knows his birthday and the train schedule and the best time to steal a loaf of bread. Other than that, he lets everything pass. He knows it’s Sunday when he sees cashmere ties and flagrant hats, so he’ll weave himself into the crowd with a gingham flat cap because he likes the taste of communion wine. His hair is slicked back with puddle water and there’s an itchy price tag stuck on his khaki shorts. Afterwards he likes to pray behind the church, where there’s a garden and stone angels, and he asks God for butterscotch or sunny days.

He dreams of being a prince. A Vatican palace, marble floors and towers of gold. He’d eat chocolate macaroons for breakfast and wear nothing but satin blouses with diamond brooches. He’d read every book on earth and learn every sport known to man, play every instrument and sing songs in every language. There would be no adults in his castle, only other children he’d pick out based on the way they smiled, and they’d play chess and day long sessions of hide-and-seek. There would be Shakespearean plays and concerts, giant beds and warm bubble baths of lavender, and he’d never be alone again. 

These are just dreams. 

* * *

  
It’s Monday morning when Donghyuck decides he wants a bouquet of daisies. There’s a bunny rabbit who hides underneath the church bushes, speckled and soft and the perfect candidate to become Donghyuck’s new best friend. He beckons it closer with grubby fingers, throws torn pieces of clover and whispers for it to come closer—but it never does. It runs away, and Donghyuck can’t quite understand why everything around him has the tendency to do the same.

At the town’s plaza, Donghyuck lingers around the stands, appearing to be deep in thought. The sky is hazed over with grey clouds of late morning, a faint breeze fiddling through the cobblestones. He looks like the typical son on errand duty, a good boy picking up his mother’s groceries as she makes brunch back at home. He wears the same newsboy cap and ominously-stained polo, a woven bag slung over his shoulder for the day’s collectibles. His hair is getting shaggy, brown bangs long and fanning over his eyelashes. As he blows the strands from his face, he thinks he could add some blackberry jam onto today’s list. 

Ditching his original route, Donghyuck detours towards the rack of jellies and syrups, all homemade with fresh fruits and honey. There’s a bushel of daisies tucked into the back pocket of his khakis—he had shoved them behind his back, unnoticed, while walking smoothly past the florist. 

He becomes enamored with a crystalline jar of peach marmalade. As he stares deep into the orangey glass, his stomach growls, and he is suddenly overcome with a craving for ten tons of toast. Donghyuck picks up the little container, twisting it hard between his hands before the lid pops. He’s not being careful. He’s hungry, and he doesn’t look behind him when he dips a finger in to scoop up a sticky heap of peach preserves. It tastes like what he imagines heaven looks so he does it again. 

“Hey! You can’t do that!” The owner, presumedly, spots him on his fourth lick. 

Donghyuck startles at the shout, promptly dropping the margarine. The glass shatters, loud and noticeable, a stray shard swiping the bridge of his nose. His eyes go wide, caught, and the man in suspenders comes stomping towards him with waving hands. 

“Stop! Somebody stop him!” 

Donghyuck runs, and the daisy petals thud down behind his footsteps. 

* * *

It starts to rain. 

The heels of Donghyuck’s scuffed Oxfords clack against the sidewalk as he stumbles down a twist of alleys and turns, his tousled hair beginning to mat obscurely against his forehead. Water mixes with the blood of his cut and it stings.

He slips on a sharp piece of stone, tripping over face-first into a murky puddle. Some of it goes up his nose. The tears start to roll. 

Someone steps up to him in the midst of it all, a looming figure dark in danger and a trench coat. He sniffles and curls into himself, sobs over his mother’s smile. “Don’t cry,” the figure whispers, “don’t cry.” 

Donghyuck stares at the hand outstretched to him in contemplative, heavy silence. It’s scarred and bandaged and perhaps even tattooed some. He takes it with both of his own. Warmth. 

* * *

He’s dirty. It takes hours to scrub the dirt from his hair, to shuck off layers upon layers of soot until the dull tan of skin filters through. The water is warm and candlelight softens the atmosphere, a haze of charcoal soap and nimble fingers. 

“Such curly hair,” the woman notes, carding through the strands. “It needs a trim.”

Donghyuck is quiet. She has full cherry lips and a silky voice, but there’s a gun holster on her hip. He stares at it the entire time, blinking occasionally, careful not to get suds in his eyes. 

An hour and a half later, tucked into an unfamiliar bed, he smells like cinnamon and smoke, and he can see through his bangs. His favorite polo is swapped with a crisp ivory button-down and suspenders that are a little too tight for his liking. Tonight he has pajamas, the real kind, big and striped. He doesn’t speak. He’s craving marmalade on toast. 

* * *

The mafia is a weird bunch. They like whiskey for breakfast and sailor songs but refuse to kiss each other’s cheeks or read bedtime stories. Donghyuck is profusely upset at the latter. 

Whiskey tastes horrible. He has trouble sleeping sometimes. 

It took two weeks for them to learn his name. His mother had always told him he was the most stubborn soul on the planet, after all. 

“What’s your name?” The same man who offered his hand sits him down atop a dining table the day after his makeover. Nothing. Donghyuck swings his legs as he ties his new, shiny shoes. “Are you an orphan?” Donghyuck kicks his foot and the Oxford falls off. It’s on purpose. 

He hates that word. It’s ugly and tastes like cough medicine. The man only laughs at this, though, and goes back to double-knotting his laces. “What’s your name, kid?” He tries again, and gains nothing in return. 

“I’m Johnny.” Johnny has a nice smile and hands him pieces of chocolate; dark like the color of his eyes, his gelled hair. Donghyuck likes him but refuses to admit it. 

He meets the rest of the group, learns all of their names too. 

There’s Johnny. Chocolate colored hair, tar-black soul. Pretty smile, full of pearly white teeth and pillow soft pink lips. All sugar and spice; with a kick. His eyes glow brighter than any flame could even begin to, sweet and burning deadly charisma.  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The one always fifteen feet from his side becomes Doyoung—currently under an arrest warrant. Jewelries, auction houses and security vans. His biggest job, the Champ-Élysées, in Paris. Four hundred and thirty-four diamonds. He’s a shark in a swimming pool—you can swim with him, but you’re never calm. The boss in charge of the assault, all carnivore grins and expensive cologne.  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The fidgety blonde who makes him breakfast is Taeyong, big doe eyes and bouncy knees. Drugs, teeth, broken ribs. He’s the king of the fights in the discos, one hundred percent pure hot blood. In a perfect plan, a time bomb.  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Taeil is always humming. Mahogany waves and blushed cheeks, he’s like Mozart—but with gadgets too. He’d programmed since secondary school, and knew anything and everything from alarms to electronics. For the rest of things in everyday life, however, it’s as if he had been born yesterday.  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Sooyoung, the brunette who trimmed his hair and tugs up his checkered knee socks every morning. A hardened optimist. She’s forged banknotes from the age of thirteen, and now she’s their quality manager. She might’ve been crazy, but she was funny, at the very least. Overflowing champagne and fireworks.  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀

That’s them. The gang. The robbers. The criminals, plus over a thousand underground henchman. They’re one big, happy family. 

On week two he signs his name on a note requesting snickerdoodle cookies for lunch, slipping it under Johnny’s office door. He gets a plateful in the morning and a note back that says: “ _Welcome home, Donghyuck._ ” 

* * *

He adapts quickly. His picture joins the mantle, he’s dawdled over and is given pocketknives with his initials etched into the metal. He learns how to dislocate a shoulder and the importance of common courtesy. 

Donghyuck’s playing dominoes over lunch on the veranda, warm summertime air and freshly squeezed lemonade when he’s is told he’ll be starting his first day of school on Thursday. Doyoung announces this declaration nobly, throwing himself as volunteer to drop him off every morning with honey on his lips and berry juice. There’s a few protests, Taeyong whining maternally about his lack of social contact and Sooyoung barking at him to chew with his mouth closed. Nevertheless, that was that. 

* * *

Donghyuck hates the uniform. The vest is an itchy cable knit and the slacks are an ugly shade of olive. His headmaster, a plump, wrinkled old woman reeking cheap potpourri, shakes her head and stares at the scar on his face. It’s a tiny thing, pale pink and flaked across the bridge of his nose. It’s a sign of recklessness, unkept danger, so she tuts at him in a way that hardly hides the disappointment coating her tongue. “We expect nothing but your best behavior.” 

He beats someone up on the second day of class. 

It starts in English, where they are reciting poetry and practicing grammar. He’s brought up to the front of the class to introduce himself, an awkward predicament, his tan cheeks warming with berry red blush. “I’m Donghyuck,” he says, practiced, “I’m fifteen and I like to run.” 

The teacher points him to an empty seat next to a raven-haired boy, his features sharp and elven-like. His knees are bouncing and there’s a megawatt grin spreading his lips, something amiably predatory gleaming in his big eyes. 

“My name is Mark,” says Mark.

“Okay,” says Donghyuck. 

Mark lets him borrow his eraser and they eat lunch together, the messy blossom of a childhood friendship Donghyuck had never experienced flowering bright. Mark tells him about traveling the world and his favorite desserts, and they make a pact to go to Barcelona and open a bakery when they’re fifty. 

It’s during recess the next day, after Donghyuck had decided Mark was now his best friend for eternity, that he gets into some trouble. It’s humid outside, and they flock to the playground where the rest of the schoolboys were fond of mini soccer matches and tag. He and Mark play catch in a isolated corner, scuffling around with grass skids on their knees and laughter from the heart. A particular offhand toss launches the ball onto the opposite side of the court, and Donghyuck jogs off to fetch it after losing rock-paper-scissors. When he finds it tucked off behind a bush, a hand other than his own snatches it first. 

“Give it back.” Donghyuck reaches for it, but the boy is quicker and roughly an inch taller. 

“Sorry,” his smile is annoyingly bright and toothy, full of spice, “it’s mine now.” 

They grapple back and forth for a few moments, an unfair taunt that Donghyuck can’t seem to catch the upper-hand on. The thief begins to laugh, a mocking jingle, and that’s the push Donghyuck needs to lurch forward and knee him in the stomach. 

The tussle moves to the floor, Donghyuck straddling thief’s hips with a hand in his hair and the other slugging his jaw. Fingers seize his throat, spit hitting his cheek. It’s a September haze of teeth and blood and dirt and a much forgotten rubber ball.  
  


* * *

At the headmaster’s office, Donghyuck is introduced to Jaemin Na. He despises him instantly. 

He is eloquent and attractive and perhaps grins even wider with bruises purpled across his face. He seduces with his high grades and viper tongue, wedges himself out of a three-week detention and settles for one and a half. Donghyuck, on the other hand, is only admitted the same privilege on behalf of his new-student status. 

When the headmaster isn’t looking, he sticks his tongue out at Donghyuck. Donghyuck mirrors him. They are enemies. 

* * *

Together they wipe down chalkboards and alphabetize the library’s autobiographical section. In between tense silence, Jaemin flings paper origami at his face. Donghyuck sticks his foot out to trip him over his laces. They see who can cuss the loudest in study hall and argue over the best planet in the solar system. 

Saturn, obviously—Donghyuck doesn’t tolerate disagreement. Pluto didn’t even qualify, much to Jaemin’s chagrin. 

On an all too quiet afternoon, Jaemin points at the faded line bridging Donghyuck’s nose. They’re in a deserted classroom, propped up on the windowsills and sucking root beer lollipops. It’s not friendly. 

“Where’d you get that?” Jaemin asks, irritatingly, jabbing the stick of his candy in Donghyuck’s face. He turns his cheek. “It’s none of your business.” The answer makes Jaemin scoff in dramatic offense, overtly not used to anything but having his way. 

“It’s ugly.” 

“So?”

“I want one too.” 

This perks Donghyuck’s interest. Jaemin scoots closer. They bridge the gap between the two of them, the tension of ardent rivalry melting like hot wax, but the heat is slow pulsing and only temporary. Donghyuck flicks out the blade he always carries around, butterfly and sharp steel, and presses it to Jaemin’s perfect nose. He laughs, so he carves. 

It’s quick. 

It’s quick and the blood is minimal but Jaemin shrieks like he’s been set on fire, so they are caught. 

This time, their parents are called into the headmaster’s office. She displays their matching set of battle scars with hefty distaste, though Jaemin’s is still fresh and just beginning to congeal through a bandaid. His parents are tall and dressed in gingham and pastel while Johnny perches at Donghyuck’s side in black leather. “You’re sorry, aren’t you, Donghyuck?” He chides him with a hand on his shoulder, voice calm and persistent like midnight tidal waves. Donghyuck is not sorry. His knuckles clench at his lap, still tender from old punches and healing in shades of coral. Jaemin looks at him with sparkling confetti eyes, and he can tell he isn’t sorry either. “Yes.” 

* * *

“Where do you live?” Mark asks him one day, drizzling, when they are skipping sidewalks on the way home. They chew bubblegum and pet stray dogs. 

“I don’t know.” Donghyuck shrugs. This bewilders Mark.

“What do you mean? Are you homeless?” 

Donghyuck thinks for a moment, thinks of that word and its implications. He knows Mark’s house. It’s paneled with stone and the door is a shiny blue with pots of camellias all around the lawn. His mother brings them cold cut sandwiches and popsicles on Fridays and his bed is littered with comic books. It’s very warm and it smells like ginger. 

He doesn’t answer and ends up dropping Mark off at his street, waving goodbye and making plans for a lake trip next weekend. Instead of walking the next five blocks and making a left, Donghyuck detours the proper route and ends up where he should be thirty minutes later. 

Doyoung bombards him with questions of worry, immediately trudging him upstairs for a bath. He tells him about Mark’s question and the weird feeling of confusion it brought him, something like being stuffed with cotton. 

“I got lost somewhere along the way,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever find my way home again.”

They kiss him for sweet dreams that night.

* * *

Jaemin was a curious boy, a wanderer, who spent his summers chasing fluttering pieces of prose and eating raspberries. On the weekend Donghyuck and Mark travel up to the lakeside with beach balls and soda pop, they meet him in the sand. He sticks the fruit on Mark’s fingers and bites them off accordingly, to which Donghyuck makes a repulsed face and does the same on his own hand. 

Donghyuck enjoys swimming. He sloshes around in the water for a long while, doing dives and paddling up to rock edges. Mark sulks on the coastline with pasty sunscreen slathered across his face, his pale skin mottled in bright burnt pink, fearful of poisonous snakes and drowning. ‘ _Why did we come here then, if you can’t even swim, Mark Lee?_ ’ Donghyuck thinks. He loves him dearly. 

As he floats chest up, the sun warming his freckled skin in hues of warm ivory and caramel, water spritzes across his cheek after a prolonged silence and Donghyuck knows he‘s in trouble. Before he can open his eyes, a pair of arms encircle his torso and tug him underwater, pushing his head down and pinching his cheeks. He kicks Jaemin in the stomach and their limbs tangle, choking up laughter and yelling each other’s names. A lifeguard blows their whistle at them, so they separate an inch and splash defiantly at each other. 

“Do you like ice-cream?” Jaemin asks, teeth bared. His hair is slicked back and he looks like a rogue mermaid. “Do you?” Donghyuck retorts, unwavering. Jaemin laughs at that and bumps their foreheads together. 

The three of them get homemade ice-cream together and watch the sunset on a grassy hill, then ride their bikes home while singing. Donghyuck sees Jaemin outside of detention a lot more. 

* * *

The next year, Donghyuck joins the track team. 

He’s a natural, long runner’s legs and lungs that could last a lifetime. It’s cathartic, a instinctual talent he thrives off of. He gets more attention for it, too. He’s tan and not so wiry, divots of muscle toning his limbs. Girls offer him their extra water or towels, but he waves it off in favor of taking an extra lap. Jaemin likes to meet him behind the bleachers. 

He always has a gift in tow, like blueberry cupcakes or a carton of chips. They talk about stupid philosophy and Mark’s newfangled insistence that they start a band, about dyeingtheir hair and reading excerpts of The Alchemist to each other. 

Today he brings a pack of mint-flavored cigarettes. They smoke because they can, because the thrill of getting in trouble is an adrenaline rush they will never deny, and because it’s a gross juxtaposition of stickiness and warmth. The two of them sit in the grass and make flower-chains, Jaemin reaching forward to stick a daisy behind Donghyuck’s ear. “They’re my favorite,” he tells him. His nicotine breath reeks of tenderness. 

* * *

After school, Mark and Donghyuck count stars and drink sour lemonade up on each other’s rooftops. One day Donghyuck talks about Jaemin’s spearmint cigarettes and how his lips looked like they were getting chapped. It was gross.

“Do you think we should get him some balm?” Donghyuck looks sincere, eyebrows pulled soft, winded of breath and ruddy in the face without even realizing. Concerned, one could say. Gracious. 

“I think you should get him some balm,” is Mark’s answer. He puts his notebook down, a journal filled with scraggly blueprints and collages of marble statues, his latest fancy after watching _Mamma Roma_ , and stares at him straight-on. There’s something suggestive in his big saucer eyes, like he’s pushing Donghyuck up to the top of a hill and waiting to see if he’ll jump. 

Donghyuck teeters over the edge. He doesn’t fall. 

“I hate him,” he says, loud, trying to convince the birds and the universe and his knotted stomach of something revolutionary, “I hate him.”  
  


* * *

  
  


“I hate you,” Donghyuck tells Jaemin over the phone, propped up on his mattress with swinging legs. He twirls the shiny wire of the receiver to the beat of his pulse. Laughter fills his left ear, slightly crackled and heady like ancient cologne. 

Jaemin was home sick, a nasty weeklong fever resulting from splashing in thunderstorm puddles and seasonal allergies. His rain boots are dandelion yellow—Donghyuck remembers tripping him over them with a polka dot umbrella and getting mud thrown in his hair as revenge. 

Donghyuck likes the sound of his voice. Jaemin knows. It only makes him all the more detestable. 

“No you don’t.”  
  


* * *

  
On his seventeenth birthday, Donghyuck invites Jaemin and Donghyuck to dinner. It’s a small gathering, if it could even be classified as one, but the house is deep-cleaned and balloons are brought out. He was woken up to buttercream frosting and party hats, granted all of the silver bracelets and rings he could ever ask for and a new pair of running shoes. Drug money worked wonders. 

Jaemin arrives before Mark, pink parcel in hand. He’s promptly fifteen minutes earlier than the designated time but he’s cocky about it and Donghyuck knows. 

“Your house is massive,” he says. Taeyong takes his jacket and offers him apple juice, upbeat and peppy and dressed in soft cotton clothes in oppose to his usual suit. Donghyuck explains that he’s his older brother and they sit together on the deck playing chess. The breeze of summer warms their faces. 

When Mark arrives, they all eat pasta and fig salad outside, making fun of their chemistry teacher and playing arm wrestle. Johnny starts it—only one plate breaks and they laugh loudly about it. Yeah, _Donghyuck’s family is so cool_. Fireflies pop in and out with bursts of butterscotch, blotting the night sky with light and love. 

Donghyuck blows out his candles in two puffs, someone cheating as he closes his eyes and joining in for assistance. He wishes for an endless summer. The cake is big and filled with strawberry preserves, but Jaemin doesn’t like this flavor. Instead he scoops up the stickiness and streaks it across Donghyuck’s cheeks, flings icing onto his nose. Mark nearly pees himself from giggling, so they throw cake at him too, but the feeling is different when they settle and Jaemin offers to feed Donghyuck with his fork. 

Mark has to leave to babysit a little sibling after dessert, so they hug goodbye and pinky swear to ride down to the parlor in the morning. It occurs to Donghyuck that he will be alone with Jaemin, and it feels like a test of divinity. “Stay the night,” they smile. 

His hair is getting long again. Jaemin points this out, just the two of them in Donghyuck’s room, sharing pajamas. They lie on his bed and listen to cassettes. “Open your present,” he ushers, sliding it across and into his lap. Their fingers brush when Donghyuck pulls away the tissue, gentle and electric, and he’s greeted with a stuffed rabbit. There’s a ruby red heart stitched into its chest, monogrammed with the letter ‘ _D_ ’. He was quite the seamster. 

Donghyuck adores it. He turns silently to face Jaemin, a warped mirror of himself, pretty and sharp and matching with a scar as pink as his mouth. There’s a million and one things said between them in that moment. 

“Happy birthday.” 

They huddle closer together and don’t separate after that, arms touching and legs twisted. Donghyuck hums along to the faded music, but Jaemin beckons him to sing aloud, so he does, mouthing lyrics sweet and syrupy into his skin. 

Late at night, when everyone is sleeping and Donghyuck is still, Jaemin is startled by the sound of glass and secrets. Donghyuck’s hair smells like gunpowder and he suspects something isn’t quite right. 

* * *

Mark takes Donghyuck to church sometimes. He hasn’t been in years, but the routine is still the same. They wear plaid and bow ties, stand for song and bow for communion. Donghyuck will sometimes look over and watch how Mark closes his eyes so ardently, thanking God for the green grass and his report card and a healthy family. He squeezes his hand on the way out and wonders how one person could be so good. 

In the garden, while parents and the elderly grab refreshments in the parish hall, the two of them conspire. “It’s called the flower oracle,” Donghyuck explains, very matter-of-fact, “watch me.”

He plucks off each petal one by one, his pulse throbbing heavy against his wrist as they gradually decrease into the sugar air. Mark watches with intent, mumbling along with Donghyuck under his breath—he doesn’t bother asking about the underlying motivation for such a ritual. Donghyuck’s eyes match the sunshine when he reaches the last petal, mouth curling into a shy, satisfied smile. It’s especially red, a busted lip in the process of recovery. 

_He loves me_.

* * *

Jaemin sneaks over periodically at 3AM. 

He’s eighteen now and it’s about time Donghyuck begins to do his part, inherit the roughness that came with illegal business and lifelong counterfeit. This means less frequent attendance at school, late night track practices and no more monthly beach vacations with Mark. At home he learns how to forge an ID, to package powder and run around the hallways with a gun silencer. It’s only vaguely suspicious, his absence—nothing Mark can’t get past with the practiced explanation of university prep, but Jaemin knows better. His heart is too jagged. 

Donghyuck doesn’t mind, of course. Hardly. It had started when Jaemin left his favorite jacket over after a calculus study session and proceeded to throw pebbles at Donghyuck’s bedroom window later that night. He greets him like Juliet and never returns the denim. 

“Your family is strange.” Jaemin sits on his balcony while Donghyuck chews on candy, dice and cards and cigarettes that taste like vanilla sprawled out in a pile between them. “They do bad things, don’t they?” 

This makes Donghyuck look up. He meets Jaemin’s gaze, hard and unreadable like stale apple pie, but along his features there are no traces of anything accusatory. He doesn’t run, or shout. He doesn’t get them into trouble. 

“Do you want to come inside?” Donghyuck never answers his question. This is enough, though, because Jaemin nods and there’s a hint of a smile tugging upon his lips, smooth and understanding. He shows Jaemin his collection of knives, the handkerchief he uses to soak ketamine with and a jewelry box full of imported gems. Jaemin likes the emeralds. 

Fortune favors the flirtatious. When they kiss he tastes like taffy, rouge and soft like ballet slippers and watermelon champagne. Jaemin’s tongue is cold, prodding, so Donghyuck lets him stay the night. 

And again. And again, again, again. 

* * *

He teaches Jaemin how to steal. They start slow, a risky game that makes their faces gleam with candied mischief. First they snatch up a waiting newspaper on a doorstep, then confectioner’s fudge by the pound, a bottle of expensive perfume Jaemin will give to his mother for Saint Valentine’s.

They cheat and scheme and lie and it’s exhilarating in the most romantic sense. 

“You’re the devil in disguise,” Jaemin says, awestruck, thinking he was in heaven. Donghyuck smiles at him like an angel and whispers in his ear how to set a building on fire with only one match. 

* * *

They graduate with heaps of roses and tulips. Jaemin is taller and Mark’s jawline is at an impressive angle, and Donghyuck has successfully completed his first heist with tints of blonde in his hair. Their parents pile embraces and praise over their shoulders, the promise of liberty and unforeseen adventure at the tips of their feet. Donghyuck tugs Jaemin behind a wall and leans up to kiss him on his toes, trading a piece of bourbon-laced hard candy between their mouths. Jaemin smiles his usual movie star smolder, sticking out his tongue to display the cherry treat. 

“I want to show you something.” 

They make plans for the night, a rendezvous out in the fields above their neighborhood. In the dusk they frolic through butterflies and tall weeds, tackling each other like they’re fifteen as they roll down the slopes of hills. Their skin touches and bruises, a push and pull of play war and childhood romance. Donghyuck pulls out a pistol embellished in shiny crimson, and guides Jaemin’s fingers over the trigger. They aim at a tree, whispering countdown into the curve of an ear, and the bullet pierces their hearts together. The kickback is hard, and the butt of the gun knocks into Jaemin’s face and gives him a black-eye. It’s a nasty swirl that Donghyuck nurses over with ice and kisses. With a knife he carves their names into the dirt, into the skin of their palms. 

“Does it hurt?” The world is quiet. “I think I like the pain.” 

They exchange vows. Jaemin writes him a letter. Donghyuck gives him designer pearls.  
  


* * *

Donghyuck is wrong about home. It is everywhere around him, from Jaemin’s fruit-shampooed hair to the halls of a mafia mansion and Mark’s rosaries. One morning he is being sent off into the world, a mission disguised in ribbon and the academic travel of a lifetime. Johnny is funding a semester trip to Sweden, where Mark will study architecture and Jaemin will attend fashion shows, and Donghyuck will memorize the security system of the Vasa Museum while composing a research paper for art history. He’ll come back home the richest man alive. 

“Let’s get married in Stockholm,” Jaemin whispers, scintillating, a casual flirt on the train. His voice lilts, holding unspoken promises, an uncapped pen bleeding all over the page of Donghyuck’s mind. He kisses the purple veins over his eyelids. 

“I’d make a great criminal, don’t you think?” Jaemin is right, he always is. He belonged in Donghyuck’s family the moment he learned his name. Goat willow trees sway in the wind past the window panels, a grandmother ticks at her hand-painted prayer beads in the seat across from them. Mark is fast asleep and drooling into his shoulder. He had asked them if they were dating after catching Jaemin’s head between Donghyuck’s thighs—it was movie night, and somehow the do not disturb sign disguised as blaring samba from the 60s did not quite register with Mark, and so he proceeded to barge into Donghyuck’s room in need of an extra blanket. 

Jaemin had told him they were engaged and expecting triplets. Donghyuck smacks them both, threatening homicide and no more cream soda. A simple yes would have sufficed. 

“Steal me the ring.” 

Jaemin laughs at his answer, snickers aloud because it is a yes in flimsy disguise, and he decides inwardly that there will be chocolate marzipan and rhubarb cake at their wedding. They want to rule the world. 

Donghyuck smiles back, lips stretching like puff pastry and a little bit of danger. He leans on Jaemin’s chest while daydreaming of the country’s biggest crystals and gardens in bloom, of scraped knees and hot tears and forgotten pasts, and falls asleep to the the calming sensation of knowing he is loved. 

**Author's Note:**

> Whew *___* hello! This whirlwind of a fic is my baby...<3 I have wanted to write childhood frenemies nahyuck since...forever...& one night this idea came to me so I took it and ran like the wind..!!! Thank u for taking the time to read, any comments/feedback/yelling in my cc inbox is very much appreciated♡♡
> 
> ✧ [twt](https://mobile.twitter.com/diorpocketknife) \+ [cc](https://curiouscat.me/yes2heaven) ✧  
> (PS stream kick it)


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